


Just Watching

by gatekat



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-05-10
Updated: 1999-05-10
Packaged: 2019-02-26 09:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13232469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatekat/pseuds/gatekat
Summary: Jack and Daniel watch each other and muse.





	1. Jack

**Author's Note:**

> Set early in the series.

He's beautiful, you know, and he doesn't have a clue that he turns almost every head when he walks in the room. Even soaked in sweat and caked with dust he's beautiful and doesn't know it. It's one of the things I love about him, that he really has no idea how special he is. If he ever gets a clue he could really become insufferable. I've seen it happen enough times. As it stands it's ... cute. Yah, that's the word, cute.

It really is beyond me sometimes that he couldn't understand what he is. I mean, he's barely thirty-six, speaks twenty-nine languages fluently and has three PHD's, never mind the physical and things he can never tell the academic world about. How could he not realize that's unusual? Special. Yes, that he's special.

Right now he's probably at his best. There's nothing for him to worry about but his rocks. Artifacts he calls them. Well, they're still rocks to me, as much to tease him as anything. Nothing matters to him other than the discovery right now -- not the dust, the hot sun, not the 18 and 20 hour days for weeks on end. He does things on these digs that would strain most of my special ops friends. Civilians aren't supposed to be able to pull this kind of endurance work but Daniel, my dear Daniel that can't go on a simple scouting mission without getting in trouble can excavate an entire city without mishap. Go figure.

At least he hasn't dragged me out into the sun to look at one of those dust covered rocks today. Yet. It's going to happen eventually. It always does. He always comes to me these days when he finds something interesting. As dull as it is, it warms me in a way the sun can't. Of all the people on these digs he comes to me first with his joy; the one person that probably cares the least about the object ... and the most about him.

Until I see that particular twitch that signals he's found 'it', all I have to do is sit here in the shade and make sure all he has to worry about is his precious rocks. I know everyone thinks I do it out of duty to my teammate, but I love watching him work like this. It wipes away all the pain and evil of the past few years. It lets the real Daniel shine through. Sometimes I wish I could wipe those years away and give him his innocence back, but that would mean taking myself out of his life too, and damnit, I'm not willing to give him up. Not even for him to be completely whole and happy again. It's greedy and selfish of me, I know, but he's the only thing in my life that might actually be able to stick by me though it all.

Ah, there he goes. He just saw something interesting. Interesting to him at least. I'm about to be dragged out in the sun to see what he's found and listen to a two hour lecture about the implications of it all. Not that I mind any more, but no one but me is going to know that.

"Hey, Jack. What's up?" His voice is cheerful as he grins up at me with some dust covered rock in his hand and the bounce in his step.

"Nothing, just keeping an eye out for trouble."


	2. Daniel

P3M620. The ruins are fascinating, but not as fascinating as Colonel Jack O'Neill for me these days.

He's up on the ridge under the only palm tree standing guard over the entire dig. A rifle resting as comfortably in his hands as I hold spade or book. I understand that weapon and the pistol he also carries; it's uses and it's purposes and I'm as good with them as I need to be. But I'll never be that comfortable with it. To him it's nearly an extension of his body.

I've never liked the military. The strict order, the violence, the blindness to the beauty in people and the world and discovery. I never tolerated having the military in my life until I met him. Dear Jack, how in the universe did I come to love you? You're everything I've hated my entire life up till now.

When we met you were even more blind than most of your kind, but it was at least from a pain I understood. We survived that mission with hardly an unrequired word and I felt little loss when you left.

When we met again you'd started to heal and I saw the supremely dedicated and loyal man beneath the surface. I wish you'd never come back. I still might have lost Sha're, but at least I could have held her memory purely. What can I say to her now? You're back, I still love you but I love someone else more? Some days I hope we never find her, or find her irrevocably dead so I won't have to face her with this truth -- and so I don't have to face it myself. The quest is definitely looking more rewarding than the finding this time. The ending of this will be nothing but pain, the path is doing so much good.

What I really don't understand is why I want him, how I came to love him. He's not that attractive, really. Not bad looking, but I expected the first man I would fall for to be some kind of g... umm ... supermodel type. Someone that can take your breath away with a glance.

Jack's not like that. It's not the same thing I felt, or feel or Sha're. There was real fire between us. Jack and I just kind of ... are. For all his sarcasm and dissing of what I care about, I'm comfortable around him in a way I'm not around anyone else. It just doesn't make sense. But it still is.

One of these days I'm going to have to risk everything and try to tell him what he means to me. In the meantime I cheat. I drag him around to see and listen to my little discovers every chance I get. On a mission like this I can get his almost undivided attention once or twice a day. He's even started to tolerate it really well these days. I guess I wore down his willingness to ignore me when it's quiet.

Hmmm, this will do nicely. A nearly undamaged pottery statue with the paint still on it, probably related to the Olmec.

"Hey, Jack. What's up?" I call to him with the statue in my hands.

He shrugs lightly. "Nothing, just keeping an eye out for trouble."

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Write_List The Window Exercise. (Pick a window at home, school, work, or anywhere else you like. Write about what you see through the window. It can be a neutral observation, just a slice of daily life from a personal point of view or it can be a more complex short story.)


End file.
